Oakland Port in Passage / Transitions ahead with shoreline plan

Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Wednesday, April 8, 1998

1998-04-08 04:00:00 PDT OAKLAND -- For a long time, the story of the Oakland waterfront has been the story of the city's proud and mighty port. But that time is passing, and the Oakland shoreline is due for dramatic change.

Critics are no longer willing to let the port dictate how the city uses its most valuable resource -- the 19-mile bay shoreline from the railheads of West Oakland to the marshes of East Oakland.

They have their own ideas, from turning the estuary shoreline into a green work-and-play area to ensuring that waterfront property that the military is handing over to the city is used to create jobs for local residents.

And port officials, finally, are laying aside their traditional feistiness to listen -- and to deal.

"They're persistent, and if you become equally persistent, they're stoppable," said George Bolton of West Oakland, who heads a city advisory group that wants to block plans to convert the much sought- after Oakland Army Base into a back lot for the port.

Bolton isn't challenging port officials' desire to keep Oakland alive and fighting as an international transportation hub. What he questions is the port's historic image as the city's economic colossus.

Over the years, port boosters have said that no matter what the agency does, the city's economy and job base are bound to gain.

But critics say that in some ways, the port

has cost Oakland -- in noise and air pollution, unplanned development of the estuary shoreline and in the economic chances the city has missed out on because the port lords it over the scene.

Not that the port, a city department that operates independently under a City Charter provision dating to the 1920s, hasn't earned its keep. Once a collection of backwater docks for military and farm goods, it took a risk in the 1960s and rebuilt the harbor to handle the new method of shipping known as containerization. The bet paid off, and Oakland eclipsed San Francisco to become the bay's premier harbor and one of the busiest in the world.

But critics now say there is too much promise in the waterfront to entrust its future to a single agency with a narrow business focus.

Under plans backed by Bolton's group and being considered by the city, the seaport would grow. But Oakland would also have a chance to develop other trade-related businesses along the waterfront -- ones that could offer more to Oakland residents, as well as a wider array of jobs.

Into the bargain, the physical bond between Oakland neighborhoods and the shoreline would be restored. Port-endorsed plans call for a bay habitat and park in West Oakland of the size of Lake Merritt, and a shoreline drive in East Oakland with more than 100 acres of parks strung along it.

Port officials understand that waterfront politics are changing, and with their critic and neighbor Jerry Brown hoping to sweep into the mayor's job, they are anxious to get things done now. Their answer is to work more cooperatively with other Oakland interests.

They say they are willing to go along with the community's vision for the Army base, which will be handed over to civilian use in 2001. And last month, they agreed to allow port real estate projects to be appealed to the City Council. Their decision was defensive, fending off critics who wanted the port to throw shoreline land-use authority back into city politics after 70 years of legal separation from it.

"The city has discovered the importance of the waterfront," said Rick Wiederhorn, the port's planning manager. "We have to be good neighbors."

Under state and city law, the port's mandate is to manage the publicly owned tidelands for commerce -- a mission that port administrators have carried out with zeal. Yet the port is a department of the city, overseen by a commission appointed by the mayor. It is ultimately not a business, but a public agency, and Oakland interests have long expected it to share the wealth in the form of jobs, contracts and even cash dividends paid to the city.

The tension between the port's commercial and civic roles has been so divisive that attempts to combine the two have failed.

But now, as a result of five years of study, the port- and city- backed Estuary Plan is on its way to becoming Oakland's blueprint for the shoreline between Jack London Square and Oakland International Airport. The area has funky appeal, but it is an often-forbidding landscape strewn with sunken boats, chain-link fences and abandoned industrial plants.

The plan was hatched by the Waterfront Coalition, a citizens' forum that has brought port bosses and their longtime critics together and acted as a "demilitarized zone" in which consensus may be reached, according to its chairwoman, Sandy Threlfall.

"It was very difficult to help the port staff realize that the shoreline belongs to everyone," Threlfall said. "They thought that if they gave us eight feet, that was enough."

The group thinks it would be a mistake to waste prime sections of the 422-acre base on storage and parking for the port, as port officials have suggested.

That is a widely held view among city leaders, who see the base as the richest real estate opportunity anywhere on the bay shoreline. "It represents an opportunity we haven't seen in 50 years," said Steve Costa, executive director of Oakland Sharing the Vision, a group of civic and business leaders that helps guide long- term planning for the city.

Urban planning professor Ed Blakely, a candidate for mayor, said the Army depot offers Oakland a chance to restore its industrial base. Imported raw materials that arrive in Oakland, such as food and parts for transportation equipment, could be turned into finished goods at plants located a step back from the docks, he believes.

For West Oakland, one of the most impoverished districts in the Bay Area, the chance to have a say in the future of the waterfront is a breakthrough in a troubled relationship with the port.

For 30 years, it's been an almost sanctified theme in Oakland politics that the way to the city's economic and social stability is through the port. But for some West Oakland residents, the disadvantages of living next to the port, with its gantry cranes, rail yards and seaport terminals that can receive as many as 1,500 truck trips a day, have outweighed its promise as a source of jobs.

The port's maritime operations directly employ 8,800 people. But freight forwarders are based in San Francisco and the Peninsula, and warehouse workers in the Central Valley -- which leaves only 12 percent of the port's jobs to Oakland residents.

"The people of Oakland are not against the port," Bolton said. "It's just a question of: 'Show me the money and show me the jobs.' And no one has shown that yet."

Oakland port officials have been cultivating a new neighborliness as they face critical negotiations with the federal government, environmentalists and their maritime customers.

Oakland has long since lost its lead to ports with more land, government subsidies and deep water. Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles, said: "There are people down here who follow ports, and they say that sooner or later, Oakland's going to get knocked out of the game."

But Oakland officials say their port can remain an international gateway if it can offer shippers deeper water and speed the transfer of goods from ship to rail. They say the Oakland harbor, which is constantly filling up with Sierra silt, must be dredged to 50 feet to handle bigger ships. But the support of the government and environmentalists must be secured if this is to be done quickly.

At the same time, officials say, transportation companies must help the port build the fastest ship- to-rail handoff point on the West Coast. The $600 million intermodal terminal and the ship berths to go with it would be built on land the Navy is giving back to the port in a separate base closure.

The port's expansion strategy is banking on the hope that the Asian economic crisis is temporary and that in the long run, consumers in China and India will generate so much trans-Pacific trade that any port equipped to handle it will profit.

"It's a gamble that has to be made," said Steve Erie, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. "Expand or lose."

If the latest bet pays off, Bolton and others have ensured that this time, a dividend for the community will be part of the deal.

In another five years, Bolton hopes to be tramping around a park in the docks of West Oakland. If its seaport expansion is a hit with customers, the port would build the park around a shallow- water wildlife habitat created by partially filling the Middle Harbor basin with dredged mud.

"It's going to create not only a place for the baby fish and baby birds, but for our children," Bolton said. "A place to give them some sense of responsibility for the land."

OAKLAND ARMY BASE

The base will be handed over for civilian use in 2001.

1) The Army's old

Pier 7 at the foot of the Bay Bridge has been obtained by the

port, which has renamed it the Burma Road Terminal. The terminal

will replace the Ninth Avenue Terminal, which may be used for

storage or converted for civic use. The port, East Bay Regional

Park District and Caltrans are discussing developing a regional

park for the tip of the point at the bridge approach.

2)

The port wants to fill in the area between berths 22 and 9,

adding as many as 50 acres to the terminal now occupied by Sea-Land

and creating a continuous line of berths on the Outer Harbor.

The port needs a variety of places to deposit mud from its proposed

50-foot dredging project. This would be one.

3) The port

had wanted the area east of Maritime Street set aside for maritime

maintenance, storage and parking. A West Oakland group advising

the city on the reuse of the Army base rejected this, proposing

light industry instead. A final decision by the city on the

future of the Army base is not expected until June.

NAVAL SUPPLY CENTER

After

almost 60 years, the Navy is moving out and returning the base

to the port.

4) The port has a $600 million plan to put

as many as five new berths on the Inner Harbor and a fast ship-to-rail